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recipe: almond cashew ricotta

Holy wow. This is something I’ve been working on for years and finally got right. It’s the right texture, the right taste, the right look. It really feels like ricotta to me. Not that I so desperately needed a perfect ricotta, but over time it became a fun challenge. And, I often make lasagna for dinner parties and for friends, so getting a good ricotta to make that extra special was important to me.

I’ve made tofu ricotta roughly 20 times and it just never wowed me. It was a good texture, it tasted okay, it held up when baked. But, something was missing. Then, a few months ago, I started making our almond milk at home in my VitaMix and (as anyone who does this is painfully aware) found myself with about 20 cups of almond pulp very quickly.

A quick scan of the internet will find you a few semi-interesting things to do with almond pulp and I even half-heartedly tried a few. But, then, one day on Pinterest I spied almond pulp ricotta and my heart skipped a beat. I didn’t even click through to the recipe, I was already running to the kitchen. Why hadn’t I thought of that!

So, luckily I’d acquired a nice stockpile of pulp to experiment with, and the following recipe was born. The cashew cream gives the almond pulp just enough moisture to mimic ricotta. The vinegar, miso, lemon, and mustard give you that cheesy bite you’re looking for (but, it’s mild, as with actual ricotta). I am happy to eat this with a spoon, but baked in lasagna or stuffed in shells or spooned into eggplant for rollatini, this stuff is legit.